The research of the Hadronic Physics Group aims to understand how the theory of the strong force, Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), generates bound states of quarks and gluons known as hadrons. The proton and neutron are familiar hadrons, each composed of three quarks. Our emphasis is in studying mesons, which typically are composed of a quark and antiquark. In principle QCD allows mesons made with more exotic configurations of quarks and gluons and even mesons composed purely of gluons, glueballs, but these seem rare in nature. We'd like to try to make and study these exotic mesons using high energy particle collisions as a way to test our understanding of the allowed methods for building hadrons in QCD.

We are always looking for enthusiastic graduate and undergraduate students to join our research team.

Photoproduction of light mesons and hybrids at Jefferson Lab

Studies of excited and exotic charmonium in e+e- collisions at IHEP Beijing

CURRENT EXPERIMENTS

This research is supported by the US Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Physics, the Indiana University Vice Provost for Research, and the Indiana University College of Arts and Sciences.